The daily grind: 8-14-13

The Daily Grind provides daily match-up advice for tinkerers and daily fantasy players. I welcome advice to help make this column more effective, including notice of impending weather events, new injuries, and changes to platoon situations. Ownership rates are from Yahoo!

The daily picks are a mixture of Daily League specific advice and information for the more typical fantasy owner.

Today’s weather watch

We’re once again looking at a chance for isolated storms in Washington D.C. and Atlanta.

Today’s grind

There isn’t too much you’ll want to use today on the hitting side of things.

Tomorrow’s grind

Pitcher (to start): Earlier in the season, I recommended Rick Porcello quite a few times. He finds his way back into my good graces with a lovely match-up against the Alex Rios-less White Sox.

Jorge de la Rosa is 45 percent owned and faces the Padres tomorrow. His peripherals aren’t particularly appealing—most notably a 1.88 K/BB ratio. I usually try to avoid pitchers under a 2.5 K/BB ratio.

Ivan Nova has a difficult assignment against the Angels, but he’s seemingly turned the corner as a pitcher and should owned outright in most leagues. He’s at 44 percent owned currently.

Brandon Beachy continues to draw favorable match-ups in his rehab tour. This time around he’ll face the Phillies.

Pitcher (bum): Carlos Carrasco versus Kyle Gibson is a classic match-up between a rusty veteran who never fully succeeded and the bright-eyed youngster who has struggled through eight starts. Okay, maybe that’s not a classic match-up, but it is exploitable.

Aaron Harang has shown a few flashes of brilliance this season, but they are overshadowed by many terrible starts. The Rays will look to bury him in their quest to catch the Red Sox in the standings.

Hitter (power): Keep an eye on Avisail Garcia. I like his potential as a low cost fantasy contributor.

Pitchers to come

Thursday: Tony Cingrani and Zack Wheeler remain the top options, but keep an eye on Sonny Gray against the Astros. I had to pause writing the column to go pick up that match-up (sorry Will).

Friday: Alex Wood is still the pick for Friday. For some reason, I overlooked the possibility that the Braves would limit his innings this year, so my bullish prediction from yesterday may be nullified. For the time being, it sounds like the Braves will try to reduce the workload of Julio Teheran and Wood when Paul Maholm returns from the disabled list. Keep in mind that they’ll probably want both pitchers for their playoff run, although it wouldn’t surprise me if Wood came out of the bullpen.

Keep an eye out for Jose Alvarez, who may get recalled to pitch the second game of the Tigers doubleheader with the Royals.

About Brad Johnson

Brad is a former collegiate player who writes for FanGraphs, MLB Trade Rumors, The Hardball Times, RotoWorld, and The Fake Baseball. He's also the lead MLB editor for RotoBaller. Follow him on Twitter @BaseballATeam or email him here.

Comments

So the deal I’m looking at re: Victor Martinez would be Desmond Jennings and Chris Archer for VMart and Glen Perkins or Casey Janssen. In my roto league (I have 1 of each). I’m flush in HR and SB but competing for points in AVG, RBI and SV. And K’s, which Archer hurts me in every time out. The alternative would be making the same deal but for Perkins and Janssen and going with Castro at C. What do you think?

The difference between Castro and Vmart isn’t that great – maybe a few more runs and RBI chances for Vmart given the team, but doesn’t seem like there’d be much difference in HRs or batting average.

I don’t know the rest of your lineup or how the categories are stacked up, but if you you’re able to pick up a bunch of points in Saves, stick with Castro and pick up Perkins and Janssen. You -might- lose a couple of RBI or a HR here and there, but you should almost definitely pick up an additional 15+ saves over the rest of the year.

ABS – Urista summed up most of my thoughts. The RoS difference between VMart and Castro is small enough that there’s no reason to jump through hoops to make the change.

Will – that kind of breaks things down a little too far. I usually ignore home/road splits not involving quirky stadiums. I doubt there’s value in combining the splits as the samples would be meaningless.